The narrow bed where he’d made love to her so beautifully, albeit in a dream state, was rumpled and unmade, the single blanket thrown back revealing one worn grubby sheet, patched and thin. A crumpled pillow lay discarded on the floor. What was he thinking, living here all alone, revelling in self-pity and moral martyrdom, when he could be with her in a comfortable bed? How would they ever salvage this marriage if they didn’t sleep together?
Amos Todd, like his family before him, had been born in this ancient house; had lived, worked, and would no doubt die here in the peace and isolation of these hills where none of the new breed of tourists ever trod. He was self-sufficient and independent to a fault. A quiet, introspective man who trusted no one, not even his wife, who rarely even thought to cuddle his own children. What could a woman do with such a husband?
The next instant, Ella was ripping the sheets and blanket from the bed. She tore off the pillow case, stripped the mattress bare, and gathered the whole lot into a bundle ready for Mrs Rackett to wash. Not satisfied with that, she pushed the mattress off the bed and propped it against the wall. Then she unscrewed the legs from the base of the bed, and completely dismantled it. Let Amos try and sleep in it now. He’d find precious little comfort on the bare floorboards.
* * *
Amos never went near his attic bedroom during the day, but Ella heard him pass her bedroom door and climb the rickety stairs about half an hour after she’d retired for the night. She heard the door of the loft open, his footsteps move across the floor, and imagined him carrying in the oil lamp, placing it on the box he used as a bedside table. The silence now was deafening, the only sound being the thump of her heart. What would he do? Would he come to her, or obstinately sleep with no covers on the bare mattress?
It was almost a relief when she again heard his step on the stair, and then the door of her room opened.
‘I suppose you did this.’
Ella was sitting up in bed in her new silk nightgown, the light of her own bedside lamp illuminating her fair beauty as she smiled shyly at him. ‘I thought it time we became man and wife proper, Amos. Or that you at least talked to me, instead of hurling insults because I simply want to look pretty for you.’
His face took on that tight, condemning look, and for a moment she thought all was lost, that he’d stalk away again, as before. But then he softly closed the door and came into the room. He looked all gangly and uncomfortable standing there, not quite knowing where to put himself, his expression almost sheepish.
‘I’ve been wondering lately if happen I’ve been a bit too judgemental, like, a bit hard on thee.’
Ella couldn’t help smiling at this understatement, and the way he’d slipped back into the old-fashioned ‘thee’ again. She patted the bed, inviting him to sit, and without protest, he did so, perching on the edge as if she might contaminate him if he came too near.
‘I certainly think it’s time we were more open and honest with each other, don’t you? I’ll start, shall I, by admitting that I never wanted to marry you, and objected most strongly. I gave in only because of the retribution my father would have inflicted upon my sisters, had I not obeyed him.’
He frowned. ‘What sort of retribution?’
Ella told him then about the many beatings their father had regularly given his three daughters while they were growing up, either by use of his fists, or the leather belt from around his waist. She described that day when Josiah had finally broken her resistance by hanging Livia by her wrists, like a piece of meat from a butcher’s hook, in a cage he kept specifically for that purpose in the tower room. Amos looked shocked and appalled by this, at first reluctant to accept the truth, but by the time she was done explaining his treatment of her mother, and her true relationship with Mercy, he believed every word.
‘He kept a mistress?’
‘Several, I believe.’
‘And rejected Mercy because she was the child of one? But the fault was not the child’s.’
‘Indeed not.’ Ella almost sighed with relief that he was taking this so well. ‘She is an innocent, albeit one with a huge chip on her shoulder. But then why wouldn’t she when her own father had her locked in the workhouse.’ Ella went on to relate the tale of the birching Josiah had ordered.
‘How could he treat you all so badly, his own children?’
‘I wish I knew. I suppose because he never loved us, never loved anyone but himself. Do you love your children?’
‘Of course.’
She looked at him then, her gaze challenging. Ella was deeply afraid of saying the wrong thing, yet knowing that if they didn’t begin to break down these barriers between them, they’d never get anywhere.
‘You gave little sign of it when I first came here. It’s been a real battle to even get you to allow them to play, as normal children should. And don’t tell me Esther wouldn’t approve, because Esther isn’t here any more, but you are. They would also like it if you gave them a hug now and then. It’s quite safe to love them. You aren’t going to lose them, Amos. I understand your fears about sickness and infections, having learnt about Esther’s final days, but you don’t need to be quite so paranoiac about cleanliness, or frightened of loving them. Neither Tilda nor Emmett is going to get sick and die, as their mother did. They’re healthy and strong, but you will most certainly lose their love if you don’t show them yours.’
Having said her piece, what she’d been longing to get off her chest for some months, Ella held her breath and waited for his reaction, not even daring to look at him.
‘Do they hate me?’ he asked at length, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Is it too late?’
She smiled, and there was such shame in his face that her heart went out to him. ‘No, of course it isn’t. It’s never too late to tell someone that you love them. Not if it’s the truth.’
Ella caressed his hands, so rough and hard, yet so gentle. ‘I know you love them really, and that you loved Esther. I’ve no wish to interfere with what you had with your first wife, but you’re married to me now, and life moves on, things change. I confess I once foolishly fancied myself in love with Danny Gilpin, but that’s all it was, a silly fancy, a boy and girl crush. I spoke the truth when I said we did nothing to be ashamed of. You were the one who took my virginity, Amos, the night I came to your little eyrie upstairs.’
His face flushed crimson at the memory. ‘You were so beautiful, I thought I was dreaming.’
She smiled shyly at him. ‘It was lovely. Perhaps we were both dreaming.’
‘And I spoilt everything by mistrusting you again.’
‘And throwing biblical insults at me. Not quite right to use the Bible in that way, is it?’
His flush deepened. ‘I was ashamed of my own weakness in wanting you.’
‘Why? It’s not a disgrace to love your wife, Amos, even the Bible would approve of that.’
He looked sheepish. ‘I know, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to trust you because of what happened before, with Esther.’
Ella pushed back the bedclothes and edged closer to lean against his shoulder. ‘Why, what happened, Amos? Tell me about Esther.’
‘She took a fancy to a quarryman. She’d often go down there, claimed to be fascinated by the stone and watching the men work. Then I came home unexpectedly one day and found her with one of them. In this bed.’
‘Oh, Amos, how dreadful!’ Ella was appalled, and understood everything now. ‘You must have been devastated.’
‘I never could trust her after that.’
‘Nor any other woman.’
‘I suppose not. She took to driving into Kendal once or twice a month, supposedly to market, but I suspected her of meeting him there instead.’
Ella sighed. ‘That must have been difficult for you to live with. No wonder you would never let me go into town. And then she got sick?’
‘She caught scarlet fever, but I stood by her.’
‘That was brave and noble of you.’
‘She was s
till my wife, no matter what she’d done. It’s Christian to forgive.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘We all make mistakes, Amos, and you did indeed look after her well. I’m sure she couldn’t have asked for better care.’
He put his arm about Ella, stroked her silver fair hair, then let his hand fall away, as if he didn’t feel he had the right. ‘But I took it out on you, and on the children. I felt so stupid, so used, not trusting anyone. I closed in on meself. I thought, why would anyone love me?’
There was such sadness in his eyes, Ella could bear no more. ‘I do. I love you, Amos. I do really.’
He looked at her as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
‘I know I didn’t want this marriage, and behaved very foolishly when I first came here, grumbling and moaning the whole time, not being prepared to pull my weight and do my duty as your wife in any way. I was perverse and provoking, half expecting you to turn violent and hit me when I disobeyed you, as Father used to do.’
‘I would never do that, although you were very stubborn at times.’ He half smiled. ‘And really quite funny: being chased by the geese, falling in the bog, afraid of the cows, and not making any cheese but still wanting to take it to market to sell. I liked it best when the rats scared you into my arms.’
She gazed into his brown eyes. ‘That’s when you first kissed me.’
‘I liked that bit quite a lot.’
‘Then why don’t you do it again?’ It was about as clear an invitation as she could give. ‘I love you, Amos, and there’s no shame in that. I’m not a bad woman, I’m your wife. What more can I say?’
‘You could say that you forgive me, because I love you too, Ella,’ he murmured, so softly she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. ‘I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you at your father’s house.’
‘Oh, Amos, I think I started falling in love with you when you rescued those new-born lambs in the snow, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I also quite enjoyed seeing you bathing in the river.’
His eyes widened with shock. ‘You were spying on me?’
‘I was,’ and she grinned wickedly at him.
Then he was indeed kissing her, and when he finally paused for breath, all she could say was, ‘Oh, kiss me again. And again, and again, and again.’
Amos readily obliged, and Ella sank back on the pillows in her pretty nightgown, which he at once set about gently removing, having properly admired it first and remarked on how pretty it was. They both began to laugh with the sheer joy of finding each other, and of finally bringing down that wall of silence and distrust.
Much later, when they lay with their arms about each other in the big comfortable bed, Amos said, ‘So this is what it feels like to be in love?’
Ella sighed with happiness. ‘It is indeed, my love, and the best part is that it can only get better and better.’ And pulling him to her once more, proved she was right.
The next morning Amos brought Ella a cup of tea in bed, kissing her and telling her to sleep in while he went to collect the cows for milking. It was George who found him some time later, alerted by his pitiful cries, caught fast in the gin trap Josiah had set.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It took every ounce of George’s strength, with the assistance of Ella, Mercy and Mrs Rackett, to prise the gin trap off him. Once used in the dale to catch pine-martins, they were somewhat frowned upon now, because of the dangers of the kind of accident that had occurred with Amos. Had he not been wearing good strong boots his leg could well have been completely severed. Even so, the wound was dangerously deep, and pumping blood. If he didn’t get to a hospital soon, he could still lose it. Ella grabbed some bailing twine and tied a tourniquet above the savage gash while George ran to bring round the cart.
Mrs Rackett fetched blankets while Mercy kept repeating, ‘Who would do this? Who would do such a thing?’
‘This is my father’s work,’ Ella bitterly responded. ‘He must have set the trap when he called yesterday.’
Mercy said, ‘He meant this for me, didn’t he? Not your husband.’
‘What does that matter now?’ Ella was in tears, stroking his hair as Amos lay groaning in agony, desperately trying to soothe him but not knowing how to ease his pain.
‘But why?’
‘Because he’s the devil,’ Ella almost screamed at her. ‘Haven’t you learnt that yet?’
They laid Amos in the back of the cart on the spread blankets, Ella and Mercy beside him, and George drove them into Kendal, leaving Mrs Rackett to mind the farm. But while doctors rushed to tend to the patient, and Ella wept, Mercy slipped away unnoticed. There were things she needed to say to Josiah Angel, and now seemed as good a time as any.
Mercy had been waiting a long time for this moment and she intended to savour it to the full. The maid showed her into a gloomy hall, and to her surprise Josiah seemed quite jovial, almost welcoming, murmuring something about how it was indeed time the pair of them met and talked properly. Mercy couldn’t agree more.
She followed obediently as he took her upstairs to what he called his study. She thought it a bleak sort of room as he ushered her inside, looking about in surprise for some sign of a desk. Only when he turned the key in the lock did she realise her mistake, and her heart gave an uncomfortable lurch.
This wasn’t his study. This was the tower room Livia had described to her in painstaking detail, and told her to avoid at all costs. Not that she’d believed the tale when first she’d heard it, unable to accept that a man of Josiah Angel’s standing would commit acts of such violence against his own legitimate daughters. Now she recognised that Livia had spoken nothing but the truth, for there, in one shadowed corner, complete with hook, was the cage. Mercy gazed at it in horror, a chill rippling down her spine.
And then she recalled the trauma of her mother’s death, and her anxiety to tell her daughter the truth about her birth. Mercy remembered how, even with her dying breath, Florrie had still defended this tyrant, naively believing he would help her beloved girl to find work and a new life. How wrong she’d been, which only proved how scandalously Josiah had used and abused her innocence.
Mercy turned to face him with fresh courage in her heart. ‘I thought you might like to see that I’m well, and, as you see, quite unhurt.’
He had the gall to smile, although it was more of a sarcastic smirk. ‘And your husband?’
‘He is perfectly well too. Your son-in-law was the one to get caught in the trap you laid, unfortunately. He’s in hospital, his wounds being tended to even as we speak.’
‘Amos?’
‘Yes, Amos.’
‘Damnation, that wasn’t supposed to happen!’
‘Bit careless of you then to leave a gin trap lying about where anyone could step into it. It could just as easily have been Ella, your precious daughter.’
Josiah made a scoffing sound deep in his throat. ‘She’s not precious to me, none of you are. Daughters! Women! The bane of my life. If only Roberta had given me sons, as was her duty, none of this would have happened. Serve Ella right if it had been her, the little tart. It wouldn’t have troubled me in the slightest. I’m surprised you care anyway, since she’s having it off with your husband.’
Mercy was stunned by this bitter attack on Ella. The unexpected turn of events forced her to rethink her attitude, along with the assumptions she’d made about the Angel family generally.
‘She isn’t having it off with anyone. George just likes to tease, that’s all. He’s a flirt, yes, but devoted to me. It’s good to know somebody is, since my mam is dead, and you, my own father, care so little you’d happily see me crippled. What kind of man are you?’
Josiah pulled a walnut from his pocket and cracked it in his palm. ‘A powerful one! A man determined not to see a lifetime of endeavour destroyed by stupid females.’ He threw away the shell and crunched on the nut with sharp yellow teeth. ‘You’re nothing to me. Just a bit of flotsam that has chanced by, that I can
throw away as easily as that shell.’
Mercy moved a step closer, that familiar dark curl of anger starting up deep inside. ‘A bit of flotsam, am I? Your contempt for women revolts me. Any decent man would feel ashamed of the way they treated my mam, but you don’t know the meaning of the bleeding word. I understand that now, after what I’ve witnessed today. I suppose you saw my mother as just some bit of skirt for you to have fun with, and me, your own child, as an inconvenience. Is that the way it was?’
His lip curled in derision. ‘Florrie knew what she was about when she opened her legs for me, and no doubt a dozen others before and since. And you’ll follow in her footsteps, whore that you are.’ He took a key from his pocket and moved over to the cage.
Mercy watched him, mesmerised; fear and fury warring for supremacy within, yet not for a second would she allow him to see that she was afraid.
‘Is that what you want, for me to prove your theory that women are contemptible? Would it please you if I were a whore? Would you feel justified then in your treatment of Mam and me? Well, you’d be wrong! The truth is, everyone who knew Florrie would recognise it for the lie it is. She was a good, honest woman, just far too loving and trusting. She made the bad mistake of falling in love with a devil instead of a prince. And I’ll make sure everyone is made aware of that fact.’
He actually laughed out loud at that. ‘You think I’d allow some workhouse brat, born on the wrong side of the blanket, to bring me down?’
‘Oh, I’ll bring you down all right. I’m going to blacken your name and make you sorry you ever clapped eyes on Florrie Simpson. I’ll tell everyone the truth about how you used her, then abandoned her with a young child. I’ll tell them how she wasn’t the only woman you enjoyed, tell them about this room, and this flaming cage.’ She was spitting the words at him, spewing out all the fury that had festered in her over the last year or more. ‘I’ll prove to the whole world that Josiah Angel is really a devil in disguise. See how bleeding powerful you are then.’
‘Perhaps you would, if ever you got the chance. Unfortunately, I’ll make damn sure that you don’t.’ Apparently unconcerned by her threats, he calmly inserted the key and unlocked the door of the cage, checking that the hook was still in place. Then he turned to smile at her, looking like a cat about to gobble up its prey. ‘I can see that you’re very like your mother in many ways. You have her sense of humour, and her ferocious courage. She always had guts, did Florrie, and the sweetest little fanny in the business.’
House of Angels Page 30
